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Race-Recovery Index: Is Stimulus Helping Communities in Crisis?

Tracking the Equity of Our Recovery The Race-Recovery Index, a project of the Kirwan Institute, is designed to measure how all people, but particularly marginalized populations, are faring in the midst of the national recovery efforts. The two primary tools for measurement that will be used on a monthly basis will be the national unemployment figures by race, and the Federal contract procurement of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). Additional forms of measurement may eventually be added. As new information becomes available, the Index will be updated accordingly and will include commentary about trends in the findings.

National Unemployment

While the recession has impacted virtually every aspect of our nation’s economic and social fabric, communities of color have been disproportionately affected, particularly when it comes to employment. For example, between January of 2009 and January of 2010, unemployment among Whites increased 22.3%, while Black and Latino unemployment increased by 28.6% and 30.3% respectively. More recent trends show that the White unemployment rate has decreased each month since October of 2009, while the rate for Blacks continued to climb for most of that period. A further breakdown reveals that the unemployment rate for Black men (17.6%) is almost twice that of White men (9.1%), and that the unemployment rate for White youth is 23.5%, compared to 37.2% and 43.8% among Latinos and Blacks.